If mom and dad can’t stop fighting, it’s the kids who suffer. In the ongoing battle between Major League Baseball and the Players Association, the kids are all normal people working in and around the sport.
In two weeks, a typical organization will send about 75 people to Arizona or Florida, bringing the salary of Mike Trout’s hairdresser closer than Mike Trout’s. All of these people – sports trainers, clubhouse staff and media relations among them – have been incarcerated for three months, couldn’t sign spring training contracts, were largely not yet eligible for vaccination, and wondered if they would be sent to COVID hotspots as the cases remain high.
They will, it turns out, as no one can agree on whether there should be 10 playoff teams or 14. The bickering has lasted almost all winter, and it’s left us here: there’s no deal coming to delay the start of the game. the season until more people can be vaccinated. Instead, spring training, as planned in the collective bargaining agreement, will begin on February 17.
Most of the blame here lies with the competition. The union may be unyielding, but there is no legal obligation to renegotiate matters that the CBA already covers. The league’s labor attorneys know this. Still, they continued to send the union proposals littered with what the union sees as a poison pill: extended playoffs.
The real money for owners comes in the form of TV rights in October, so they crave this structure. The position of the players is that extended playoffs will dilute competitiveness and stifle salaries: if you can make it through the postseason with 85 wins, why sign a free agent? They agreed to a 16-team formula last year, in an effort to recoup some of the money lost without ticket sales and as a failsafe in case the best teams didn’t come out at the end of 60 games. But the union has maintained out of season that this was a one-time concession.
The competition’s last proposal offered a one-month delay in spring training; a season of 154 games for which the players would receive their full salary of 162 games; a postseason of 14 teams; and a universal hitter designated. On Monday, when the union declined – and declined to make a counter offer – MLB released a statement that read, in part, “On the advice of medical experts, we have proposed delaying the start of Spring Training by a month. and the regular season to better protect the health and safety of players and support personnel. … This was a great deal that reflected the interests of everyone involved in the sport, pushing the season’s calendar back just a month for health and safety reasons. “
If health and safety are really the priority, why put in a proposal that you know the union will not accept? If health and safety is really the priority, why not just focus on the timeline and leave the little financial bickering for the next negotiations, which will come when the CBA ends in December? (Indeed, if health and safety are really the priority, why play baseball in a global pandemic? But that ship has sailed.)
The truth is, it really isn’t. The priority, as always, is to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the less wealthy.
Of course, the season – and with it spring training – should start a month later. COVID cases are starting to decline, and every time another arm is punctured, the world becomes marginally safer. There is no moral reason to send thousands of people to hot spots right now, where they will immediately go to restaurants (both states allow dining indoors) and contribute to the caseload. If the league had just proposed that postponed season with full pay and let the extended playoffs out, we could now prepare for a mid-March spring practice session.
Instead, trucks with equipment are heading south. The players will join them shortly. This also applies to the hundreds of people who are not represented by a union; who are less likely to receive COVID tests than the players; some of them are classified as part-time workers and therefore are not covered by the team’s health insurance. All will climb into cars or board planes and prepare to risk their lives as a bunch of adults couldn’t get a Zoom call and make the right decision. And when they get to camp, you know who won’t be there? The team owners.